I pulled the plug on all social media and completely deleted it and was very reluctant when my family told me I should start writing about music and to do so on Substack. I didn't know what it was but decided to give it a go. My worry about 'Notes' is that it is exactly what I didn't want with social media. It has become very similar. I also agree, and my wife will confirm that I have said on many occasions that I'm not sure how much more can be said about _______ band (fill in the name) that has already had a gazillion words written and ink spilled about them.
I, too, want to amplify and discover music buried underneath the usual layers. SDQ is the perfect example of a lost, forgotten band that more people should know and learn about. The waters in Texas were different in the 1960s. While the focus may have been on Haight-Ashbury, the peyote and desert skies of South Texas seemed to make things far weirder than most of the SF bands who essentially played extended blues jams at the Fillmore or Avalon and the middle-class kids who flocked to SF to dance with them and trip out in Golden Gate Park. In Texas, it was all about three-eyed men whose limbs dissolved while clearing your head and making the surroundings evolve all around you! Now, that's the type of music I want to hear!
My hope is that the venture capital / advertising stranglehold may someday relent its grip on this wonderful invention, even if that takes us back to the days of clunky BBS. But until then, may we all find agency, and peace, within the hellscape.
Sir Douglas Quintet, could that kind of uniquely Texan band exist in this funhouse mirror world? I believe yes, as can all the truly interesting things in the world. It always takes me being back in Texas to understand even better what an amazing place Texas is, with its fractured but somehow unified identity created by such a rich mixture of culture and confidence. I firmly believe that Texans were the real engines of American psychedelia, in music and in art.
Well, yes, it's all true that we are awash in "content"...and yet I find myself here reading this post, and it does add something to my day, and it does keep me from reading the news. The news is what makes me sad and anxious. Reading Substack--at its most personal--is a kind of antidote.
On another note, an old classmate of mine from my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, made a documentary about that other Texan named Townes, Be Here to Love Me.
I started this out jokingly as "an armor in the Psychic War™", so I'm glad you see it as such! That gives me renewed energy, because we need all the protection we can find. It's a nasty world out there, but also such a beautiful one, and music is my reminder of that (along with some words to stand by it).
I pulled the plug on all social media and completely deleted it and was very reluctant when my family told me I should start writing about music and to do so on Substack. I didn't know what it was but decided to give it a go. My worry about 'Notes' is that it is exactly what I didn't want with social media. It has become very similar. I also agree, and my wife will confirm that I have said on many occasions that I'm not sure how much more can be said about _______ band (fill in the name) that has already had a gazillion words written and ink spilled about them.
I, too, want to amplify and discover music buried underneath the usual layers. SDQ is the perfect example of a lost, forgotten band that more people should know and learn about. The waters in Texas were different in the 1960s. While the focus may have been on Haight-Ashbury, the peyote and desert skies of South Texas seemed to make things far weirder than most of the SF bands who essentially played extended blues jams at the Fillmore or Avalon and the middle-class kids who flocked to SF to dance with them and trip out in Golden Gate Park. In Texas, it was all about three-eyed men whose limbs dissolved while clearing your head and making the surroundings evolve all around you! Now, that's the type of music I want to hear!
You get it completely.
My hope is that the venture capital / advertising stranglehold may someday relent its grip on this wonderful invention, even if that takes us back to the days of clunky BBS. But until then, may we all find agency, and peace, within the hellscape.
Sir Douglas Quintet, could that kind of uniquely Texan band exist in this funhouse mirror world? I believe yes, as can all the truly interesting things in the world. It always takes me being back in Texas to understand even better what an amazing place Texas is, with its fractured but somehow unified identity created by such a rich mixture of culture and confidence. I firmly believe that Texans were the real engines of American psychedelia, in music and in art.
Well, yes, it's all true that we are awash in "content"...and yet I find myself here reading this post, and it does add something to my day, and it does keep me from reading the news. The news is what makes me sad and anxious. Reading Substack--at its most personal--is a kind of antidote.
On another note, an old classmate of mine from my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, made a documentary about that other Texan named Townes, Be Here to Love Me.
I started this out jokingly as "an armor in the Psychic War™", so I'm glad you see it as such! That gives me renewed energy, because we need all the protection we can find. It's a nasty world out there, but also such a beautiful one, and music is my reminder of that (along with some words to stand by it).